Defence

As discussed in the above early questing section, completing quests is the fastest method to skip through the early levels. These quests will level a player to level 45 Attack, level 34 Strength, and level 31 Defence without any direct training.

This article provides information about effective ways to train Attack, Strength, Defence, and Hitpoints through melee combat.

This guide is organised into sections based on skill levels. For example, if the section header is Levels 20 to 30, you should begin training at the area with an Attack and Strength level of at least 20. Defence is also preferred to be at that level but is not always required. The solution to lower Defence is to bring more food or use food that heals more.

Since experience rates are largely influenced by Strength level and strength bonus, it is optimal to maintain balanced melee stats until reaching the minimum requirements for the best-in-slot weapon and equipment. After this, prioritizing Strength until 99, followed by Attack and finally Defence, will result in the fastest route to max melee stats. For example, when training in the Nightmare Zone with Obsidian Armour, a Berserker Necklace, and the Toktz-Xil-Ak, Attack and Defence should remain at 60 until reaching 99 Strength for optimal experience gains.

At high levels, direct melee training is not the fastest way to train Defence. Using Ancient Magicks on defensive or chinchompas on Long fuse against Maniacal monkeys gives more Defense experience per hour than using melee.

To start off, it's strongly recommended to complete quests that give a lot of melee experience. This allows players to skip over the much slower early levels of training. Many of these quests are quick, have little to no requirements, and have bosses that can be trivialized by safespotting with any magic spell (such as Fire Strike).

The recommended quests for early melee experience are listed in the table below. Completing all of them would give the player a total 61,775 Attack, 20,375 Strength, and 15,300 Defence experience. This will level a player to level 45 Attack, level 34 Strength, and level 31 Defence without any direct training.

It's recommended to complete the Witch's experiment quest first, as it gives a Hitpoints safety margin for the subsequent quests (especially Waterfall Quest).

There are additional intermediate quests that give significant combat experience, though they have higher requirements or less trivial bosses to defeat.

Items will be listed in order of how much they increase general melee damage per second. In nearly all cases, optimising for offensive stats is more effective than optimising for defensive or balanced stats, especially when fighting the low-offence, high-hp monsters on this list. In addition, optimising for Strength is usually better than optimising for accuracy except against high-Defence monsters.